Unlearning - Education 21st Century Style
School2.0 Advocacy
IB - Finally! Jing Screencasting & MMPORG PBL
I've been incredibly busy over the last several months - Kuwait to Canada and back, followed by 2 weeks in Southern India, curriculum scope and sequence plus accreditation committees, rugby coaching... all competing with my regular teacher and coordinator duties. On top of all this, my wife and I decided to hit the recruiting trail and aim for an International Baccalaureate school.
Simply put, schools accredited by the IB Organization deliver globally empathic programs that evolve in concert with international best practices. Teachers are encouraged to search for the latest and greatest pedagogical developments and apply them to their teaching. After witnessing the dissatisfaction of U.S. teachers working in NCLB concentration camps at last year's NECC in Atlanta, and the fact that we were starting to experience administrative atrophy in our own school, we decided to set our sites high and aim for an IB school.
We were a little discouraged at first as most schools stated they were only going to recruit from job fairs. Due to the Muslim school year calendar and our Fri/Sat weekends, this just wasn't going to work out we thought, Eventually we got into talks with a couple of IB schools that progressed at a rather tedious pace when, lo and behold, one of the schools we had originally earmarked as an "editor's choice" contacted us. Jennie had made a brief foray into their application site after seeing openings for Librarian/Media Studies and Computer Teacher. After a flurry of Skype audio and video interviews, we became the proud owners of two, two-year contracts in Belgrade, Serbia.
Now I know you (is anyone reading this? - perhaps this is just a diary after all)... so, YOU may be thinking "Hmmmmm, Kuwait to Serbia, what's with this couple dragging their young kids into war zones?" Well, all I can say is, apart from the local driving nuances, Kuwait has been one of the safest and most family-friendly places we have ever been. We only felt in danger when someone accidentally flipped the channel to CNN. Somehow I think we are going to find Serbia the same - plus the advantages of IB teaching and learning, beautiful landscapes, and an extreme proximity to countries we've never had the pleasure of visiting.
You can probably tell I'm a little wired - it's going to take a while to some off this high - we accepted the jobs yesterday. Our colleagues were happy for us. We're going to miss them a lot. Time to get back up to par with Facebook, methinks.
Jing: Has anyone tried it? This application is the brainchild of the Jing project. Basically it's a screencaster on speed. It's allows one to skip many steps between the capture and embed stages. The other day a teacher asked how to prevent all the application auto startups on his computer. Here was another case of one on one when a group could all learn at the same time. So I decided to show him while doing a screencast at the same time. I donned my headset with mike and captured all while explaining the step by step process. I was then able to send the "video tutorial" to his gmail for referral when he got back home. Easy. Now the next time someone needs to know, I can merely send video instructions. If a picture is worth a thousand words, whats a video worth?
My grade 11 and 12 students are knee deep in MMPORPG - however, in this case it doesn't refer to massively multi-player online role-playing groups, but massively multi-prescribed occupational role-playing groups. The students are required to form business/R&D groups that will solve current and emerging environmental and/or societal problems by applying a synthesis of emerging technologies. Robotics & AI, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Communication, and Transportation. Basically incorporating all the disciplines of 21st Century Literacy and Global Understanding. Their businesses are based in diverse countries with varying dilemmas.
Their projects involve an innovation and design element that requires representing their conceived product in 3D. For this element, teams are using Google Sketchup for their renderings. Now this is where Jing comes in. The students can screencast themselves rotating their model while explaining the "working parts" and the science that backs up their concept. They will embed the screecasts on their websites which will host the many other requirements.
Their other teachers took a bit of convincing, but fortunately the heads of Social Studies, English and I managed to get this ball rolling. As with most projects of this size, it's the planning and overcoming the initial friction that requires the most energy - after that, they seem to be carried by their own momentum (yes - you can see the Science dept. is involved too).
The culminating activity is a Business Expo in our Performing Arts Center for The Driving Forces of Future Society. Business groups will compete for "investment funds" being distributed by professional financiers, investment company personnel and a selection of teachers.
Simply put, schools accredited by the IB Organization deliver globally empathic programs that evolve in concert with international best practices. Teachers are encouraged to search for the latest and greatest pedagogical developments and apply them to their teaching. After witnessing the dissatisfaction of U.S. teachers working in NCLB concentration camps at last year's NECC in Atlanta, and the fact that we were starting to experience administrative atrophy in our own school, we decided to set our sites high and aim for an IB school.
We were a little discouraged at first as most schools stated they were only going to recruit from job fairs. Due to the Muslim school year calendar and our Fri/Sat weekends, this just wasn't going to work out we thought, Eventually we got into talks with a couple of IB schools that progressed at a rather tedious pace when, lo and behold, one of the schools we had originally earmarked as an "editor's choice" contacted us. Jennie had made a brief foray into their application site after seeing openings for Librarian/Media Studies and Computer Teacher. After a flurry of Skype audio and video interviews, we became the proud owners of two, two-year contracts in Belgrade, Serbia.
Now I know you (is anyone reading this? - perhaps this is just a diary after all)... so, YOU may be thinking "Hmmmmm, Kuwait to Serbia, what's with this couple dragging their young kids into war zones?" Well, all I can say is, apart from the local driving nuances, Kuwait has been one of the safest and most family-friendly places we have ever been. We only felt in danger when someone accidentally flipped the channel to CNN. Somehow I think we are going to find Serbia the same - plus the advantages of IB teaching and learning, beautiful landscapes, and an extreme proximity to countries we've never had the pleasure of visiting.
You can probably tell I'm a little wired - it's going to take a while to some off this high - we accepted the jobs yesterday. Our colleagues were happy for us. We're going to miss them a lot. Time to get back up to par with Facebook, methinks.
Jing: Has anyone tried it? This application is the brainchild of the Jing project. Basically it's a screencaster on speed. It's allows one to skip many steps between the capture and embed stages. The other day a teacher asked how to prevent all the application auto startups on his computer. Here was another case of one on one when a group could all learn at the same time. So I decided to show him while doing a screencast at the same time. I donned my headset with mike and captured all while explaining the step by step process. I was then able to send the "video tutorial" to his gmail for referral when he got back home. Easy. Now the next time someone needs to know, I can merely send video instructions. If a picture is worth a thousand words, whats a video worth?
My grade 11 and 12 students are knee deep in MMPORPG - however, in this case it doesn't refer to massively multi-player online role-playing groups, but massively multi-prescribed occupational role-playing groups. The students are required to form business/R&D groups that will solve current and emerging environmental and/or societal problems by applying a synthesis of emerging technologies. Robotics & AI, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Communication, and Transportation. Basically incorporating all the disciplines of 21st Century Literacy and Global Understanding. Their businesses are based in diverse countries with varying dilemmas.
Their projects involve an innovation and design element that requires representing their conceived product in 3D. For this element, teams are using Google Sketchup for their renderings. Now this is where Jing comes in. The students can screencast themselves rotating their model while explaining the "working parts" and the science that backs up their concept. They will embed the screecasts on their websites which will host the many other requirements.
Their other teachers took a bit of convincing, but fortunately the heads of Social Studies, English and I managed to get this ball rolling. As with most projects of this size, it's the planning and overcoming the initial friction that requires the most energy - after that, they seem to be carried by their own momentum (yes - you can see the Science dept. is involved too).
The culminating activity is a Business Expo in our Performing Arts Center for The Driving Forces of Future Society. Business groups will compete for "investment funds" being distributed by professional financiers, investment company personnel and a selection of teachers.
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